Death at the Voyager Hotel Page 8

  Thelo shrugged. “You don’t fraternize with the servants. Basic rule.”

  “I don’t think that’s the way Heather thought about things, though,” Paula pointed out. “That was one of the nicest things about her. I was thinking that Amadu might know something he’s not telling Edward.”

  Thelo frowned. “You’re not thinking of going to question this Amadu guy, are you?”

  She bit her bottom lip and looked at Thelo for a long moment without answering.

  “That’s what you had in mind, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Honestly, yes.”

  “I’m warning you—don’t do it.”

  “Come on, Thelo,” she said sharply. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s going to cause problems. Problems with the police, problems with people who don’t like being questioned, and problems with me. We are not in a movie. It isn’t safe, and you are not trained in investigation, so leave it to the professionals.”

  “Professionals?” she echoed. “The professionals have closed the case, have you noticed? And don’t try to convince me that they’ll magically reopen it. Whether you, Dr. Biney, or anyone else asks them, it’s not going to happen. I know how CID works because I watched you for years trying to function within the system. It’s like an antique windup car that won’t budge, let alone start.”

  “That’s a gross exaggeration,” he objected.

  “Maybe, but I think my point is made. Either I find out what happened to Heather, or no one ever finds out.”

  “I like how you flatter yourself.”

  “Sorry, but that’s just how it is,” she said fiercely. “I may be an amateur, but at least I care, and I won’t sit around doing nothing while this investigation gets buried like a coffin.”

  Thelo sighed, shaking his head. “You’re impossible. I mean, I can’t even reason with you.” He stood up abruptly. “I’ve got work to do.”

  He went off to his study—his sanctuary from me, Paula thought ruefully. That’s the way he behaved when he was peeved with her: he gave her the silent treatment. She didn’t like it one bit but what she liked even less was a ominous feeling that trouble was brewing between her and Thelo. He wanted her to forget all about Heather Peterson, but that was not something she was prepared to do. With or without his blessing, she had to keep asking questions.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  After church on Sunday morning, Thelo and Paula took Stephan and Stephanie to the Accra Mall playground, where the twins joined scores of other happy children on the slides and trampolines.

  Paula’s phone buzzed and she saw a new text from Jost. He had attached two pictures of Heather. In the first, she was neck high in the pool, wet hair slicked back away from her face, which was lit up with a radiant smile. Her aqua eyes twinkled in the sunlight, their color made all the more intense by the reflection of the turquoise water. She looked free and lovely.

  The second photo was an action shot of her on the upstroke of the butterfly, her dark reflecting goggles just above the surface and the lean muscles of her shoulders in sharp relief. It was a masterpiece. She immediately forwarded the images to Diane, knowing she would love them.

  Paula scrolled to Amadu’s number. Hesitating over it, she glanced up at Thelo who was helping Stephan and Stephanie into the train ride. Here goes, Paula thought. Amadu didn’t pick up her call, even after three attempts, but a few minutes later he called back, curious about the unknown number that had appeared on his screen. The line was bad. Putting her finger in one ear so she could hear above the clamor of her surroundings, Paula explained who she was and why she had called. He sounded tentative, prompting her to explain that she had nothing to do with the police.

  She asked if she could rendezvous with him somewhere, since they were having trouble hearing each other. After some persuasion, he suggested they meet at Nima Junction and described what he would be wearing.

  Her heart pounding, she walked up to Thelo. “I need to go to Nima to meet Amadu.”

  Incredulous, he stared at her, but she didn’t flinch. He turned back to the children shaking his head.

  Paula found it ironic that Amadu had chosen this corner on Nima Road as the meeting place, because it was exactly where the Nima Police Station was located. She got out of the taxi, looked around, but didn’t see him anywhere at first. Nima was bustling with its customary bedlam—pedestrians zigzagging between horn-blowing vehicles, market women spilling out onto the pavement, scrap metal dealers pushing their laden trollies, and porters balancing towering loads on their heads.

  She was just beginning to worry that Amadu had changed his mind when she recognized him on the other side of the street by his accurate self-description. She waved at him and he crossed over to her.

  “Good afternoon, madam,” he said courteously. He was probably about twenty-five. He had a tribal mark on one cheek and bore the leanness of one who can’t quite fulfill his enormous calorie needs. He wore a black T-shirt with an image of Rihanna and jeans set well below his slim hips.

  A Barclays was not far away and since banks were closed Sundays, it was quieter on the side not facing traffic. It wasn’t as exposed a spot as Thelo might have advised her to choose, but Paula had quickly sized Amadu up and decided that this was no thug with bad intentions.

  “Thank you for meeting me,” she said as they stood under the bank’s awning for shade. “I don’t know if you were able to hear me well when we were talking on the phone, but as I was saying, Miss Heather worked with me at the school on High Street.”

  “It’s terrible what happened to her,” Amadu said, his head dropping. “I hear something about they say she drink too much and when she tried to swim, she drown.”

  “Did you ever see her drink a lot?”

  “No, madam.”

  “Did Chief Inspector Agyekum talk to you—the detective investigating the case?”

  “Agyekum?” Amadu shook his head. “Not at all.”

  Her phone interrupted them with the ring tone assigned to Thelo.

  “Excuse me,” she said to Amadu, moving away a few paces. “Hi.”

  “Are you meeting with him now?” Thelo asked neutrally.

  “Yes.”

  He grunted. “Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine. He’s harmless. Thank you, Thelo.” She was pleasantly surprised that he had called and hoped it meant he was relenting on his initial disapproval of her quest for the truth. She returned to Amadu. “Sorry about that. So, at what time did you come on duty on Sunday evening?”

  “At nine o’clock, then the other security guard go home and I alone am left to work until six in the morning.”

  “That’s your normal shift?”

  “Yes please.”

  “Mr. Edward told me that you went around the back of the hotel around ten o’clock to check the pool area and the chalets.”

  “Yes please.”

  “Was anyone in the pool at that time, or near the chalets?”

  “No, not at all.”

  Watching him, Paula got the impression that he was a self-assured young man. “What about Heather?” she asked. “Did you see her anywhere?”

  “Sometimes she used to go to the pool around nine or ten o’clock time, but I didn’t see her that night.”

  “And so after you patrolled the back, you returned to the front of the hotel.”

  Amadu nodded. “Yes please. I sit in that sentry box there.”

  “Mr. Edward told me he sacked you because you didn’t return to the pool area during the night.”

  “Please, Madam,” Amadu said, plaintively, “only now he say he told me when I start to work at the Voyager since about four months that make I go around the chalets and the pool every two hours, but please, he never tell me that. He tell me say I can check the place one or two times or something like that or if I think something wrong. Nobody can pass to the pool except the hotel guests, and those people don’t give any kind of problem. In all the time I work there, I never see somebody
go to the pool at midnight or one o’clock in the morning, so what am I going to check it for?”

  He sucked his teeth in annoyance and distress.

  “I understand what you’re saying,” Paula said. “I agree with you.”

  Amadu looked somewhat vindicated.

  “Do you know a man called Oliver?” she asked. “He was Heather’s boyfriend.”

  “Oh, yeah. Nice man. He always greet me when he see me. That Sunday night he came to see her, and he leave at about eleven thirty.”

  Paula frowned. “Eleven thirty? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  That was a definite discrepancy. Oliver had told Gale that he had left the Voyager at eight thirty.

  “Did he say anything to you when he was leaving?” Paula asked.

  “By that time, I was at the sentry box. When he pass there, he say, have a good night—something like that.”

  “Was Heather with him?”

  He shook his head. “No, madam. I didn’t see her at all.”

  “During the night, did anything unusual happen at the hotel?”

  “No, it was quiet. One German man coming from Tamale, he arrive after midnight to check in. By that time, Mr. Edward was still there.”

  “Mr. Edward? You mean, the manager?”

  Amadu was puzzled by her confusion. “Yes, madam.”

  Paula felt guilty asking these questions about her friend from childhood, but she kept going. “He was at the hotel past midnight? What was he doing there so late?”

  “Oh, so you don’t know?” Amadu laughed. “Sometimes Mr. Edward come there secretly at midnight or even one o’clock in the morning to check we no dey sleep on the job. One time he catch the receptionist sleeping in the back office and sack him on the spot just like that. He say he don’t pay us to sleep.”

  Well, that is true, Paula thought. “What time did Mr. Edward leave?”

  “Some time after he greeted the German man. It seem they are friends. Mr. Edward stay maybe about one hour but I didn’t see him go, so I don’t know the exact time.”

  “Do you know when he arrived at the hotel that night?”

  “Not at all. You know, he can come and go without us knowing by a side gate—only he have the key for it. He park outside and come in and you won’t know he is there because he can get into his office from the back.”

  Paula was feeling triumphant about her decision to speak with Amadu. Already she had learned that there was a secret side gate at the hotel, used exclusively by Edward, and that Oliver had left the Voyager at eleven thirty, not eight thirty. Maybe these were harmless discrepancies, but maybe not.

  “Did you ever see Miss Heather go into Mr. Edward’s office for anything?” she asked Amadu.

  “Yes, sometimes. Maybe to tell him if something is not working in her room—say for example the toilet have broke or hot water finish. Sometimes he use to go to her room.”

  Paula felt a shot of adrenaline in her chest. “He went to her room? For what?”

  Amadu shrugged. “Maybe to ask her if everything was okay. He like her.”

  “Did he ever spend a long time in Miss Heather’s room?”

  “Maybe some five or ten minutes,” Amadu said. “Or maybe twenty.”

  That seemed a long time for a manager to spend in the room of a hotel guest. “Twenty minutes? Amadu, are you sure?”

  “Let’s say ten,” he backpedaled.

  Paula moved on. “That Sunday night, did you see Miss Heather go to Mr. Edward’s office?”

  “No, madam. I didn’t see her.”

  “You say Mr. Edward liked Heather. What do you mean?”

  He smiled one-sidedly and looked away. “He like her. That’s why he sacked me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Because she always talk to me and make friendly with me. That make Mr. Edward jealous. Because he want her for himself.”

  Paula considered Amadu carefully. This palm soup was getting thicker by the minute.

  “Did he tell you that, Amadu? That he wanted her for himself?”

  He shook his head and pushed his bottom lip out. “No, but I can see how he look at her that he want her too much.”

  “What about you?” she asked. “Did you also want Heather?”

  “Me?” he said, touching his chest in surprise.

  “Yes. You.”

  He began to laugh.

  Paula couldn’t help smiling. “What’s funny?”

  “Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Allah did not plan for Miss Heather and me to be together. I just like her and respect her. She was a very kind woman.”

  “She was,” Paula agreed softly. “Amadu, tell me what happened the morning Mr. Miedema found Miss Heather in the pool.”

  “It was almost five minutes to six,” he began. “I was waiting for the day guard to come and relieve me. Then the desk clerk shouted at me that someone drown in the swimming pool, so I start to run there. Before I reach, the gardener too came running and tell me make I call the doctor. So I ran to the doctor room and wake him.

  “When we return to the pool, Mr. Miedema was pressing on Miss Heather’s chest. How she looked like, I never saw anything like that before. The arms and the legs”—Amadu bent his wrists and drew his forearms stiffly to his torso—“they were like this. Then the doctor tell Mr. Miedema to stop and he put his hand on Miss Heather neck, and say she dead already.”

  Amadu put his hands on his hips and looked at the ground, shaking his head.

  “It was a terrible experience, eh?” Paula said.

  “Yes, madam. I feel very bad, because maybe if I went to patrol the back of the hotel during the night, maybe I can save her.”

  “You can’t be in two places at one time,” she said. “And even if you went back there every hour, you might still not have been able to save her because it takes only a short time to drown.”

  “Yes, I know. But…”

  She put a friendly hand on his shoulder. “I understand how you’re feeling. Me too, I worry if maybe I missed something about Heather that I could have done something about.”

  He looked warmly at her and smiled.

  “Let me ask you something else,” she said. “When you went to the back of the hotel at ten o’clock in the night, were the lights on around the pool?”

  He nodded. “Yes please.”

  “And I know they normally stay on all night. I wish at least someone had looked out of his or her hotel window that night. Maybe they might have seen something.”

  “But, madam, I think the lights went out sometime during the night. Or someone turn them off.”

  Paula looked at him sharply. “Why do you say that?”

  “When I first see the pool that morning, the lights already turn off. By that time, it was four minutes before six. Normally they go off at six, automatic.”

  “How could someone turn off the lights?”

  “The inverter. You can use the on-off switch, or if you like, you can push the reset button and the lights will come on again automatic at the next cycle.”

  “You know how to do that?”

  “Yes. Mr. Edward teach me.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Besides you and Mr. Edward, do you think anyone else at the hotel knows how to turn off the inverter?”

  “No. Mr. Edward, he don’t like too much people to know, so only him and the night security guard.”

  “I see.” She reflected on that a moment. “Amadu, thank you.”

  She had guessed he was from northern Ghana, so she thanked him in her rudimentary Hausa, which made him smile broadly in appreciation.

  “Listen,” she said, going into her purse, “you’ve really helped me and been very patient. I know you’ve lost your job and things are hard. Let me give you a little something to help you in return, okay?”

  “Thank you, madam. May Allah bless you.”

  “And you.”

  As Paula walked back to the street to pick up a taxi, she thought deeply about
her conversation with Amadu. She liked him, but more than that, she believed him, and he had given her a couple jewels of valuable information. A serious question now arose: Was Edward, a man she and Thelo had known and trusted for years, having a secret affair with Heather? Had the affair gone bad? Or had he lusted after her, only to be spurned? Had he turned off the pool lights that night, and if so, why? The underlying question was critical: could Edward have killed Heather?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  By the time Paula made it back to the mall, Stephan and Stephanie were more than ready to eat at the food court. Paula firmly refused their request to dine at the new McDonald’s.

  “We ate at the one on Oxford Street only last week,” she said sternly. “That’s enough to last you for months. We didn’t have all this cheeseburger stuff when I was your age.”

  “Did they have Oxford Street when you were our age?” Stephan piped up brightly.

  “Yes, we did, as a matter of fact,” Paula said with some indignation. “I’m not that old.”

  Stephan nudged his sister and they both began to giggle.

  “Oh, it’s funny?” Paula said in mock outrage.

  “It’s Sunday,” Thelo scowled at her. “Why not treat them to McDonald’s?”

  “Don’t you start, Mr. Cholesterol,” she said. “You need to take off some weight yourself.”

  He rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue. Paula thought he might be thawing out a little toward her, but there was some way to go. They agreed to eat at Papaye, a wildly popular and always crowded restaurant that served a delicious variety of roasted chicken, savory rice and coleslaw.

  While Thelo helped the twins with their choices, Paula excused herself and walked quickly down the mall promenade, which was packed with youngsters flirting or sitting around texting—or both. She was looking for the shop where Oliver had bought Heather her swimsuit as part of his effort to cheer her up on the last day of her life.

  Paula found it—a store called “Sun and Sand,” which obviously catered more to expatriates than Ghanaians, who aren’t much into swimwear, she reflected. A couple of bored young assistants were inside the otherwise empty store and seemed relieved to have something to do as Paula went in and introduced herself. She asked if they remembered a slim, young white woman and a Ghanaian man coming in on the previous Sunday to buy a tangerine-colored swimming costume, as Oliver had described it, but neither of the assistants had worked that day.